Tension builds in the air as my cousin and I sit across from each other, each on the edge of our respective couches. I watch carefully as he blankly stares at the screen of his iPhone, then groan as I see a smile light up his face.

“Your turn,” he says with such excitement that I’m almost afraid to look, afraid to see what awaits me. I slide the blinking unlock button on my own phone, type in the password and log into my “Words with Friends” account. After I click refresh, my worst fears are confirmed: I’m losing.
He played the word “qi.” Qi on a triple word score, no less, and unfortunately, it earned him enough points to take the lead. What happened to that dependable rule that every letter “q” had to have a “u” afterwards?

Call me a nerd, but I take “Words with Friends” games quite seriously. It is not just a game, but a competition, a battle of wits.

It’s not so much that I mind losing the game, but that I mind losing unfairly. I have no doubt that my cousin had never heard the word qi before in his life, and that he had no idea it is defined as “a variant of chi,” according to Dictionary.com. So how then, one might ask, did he know to submit it?
Here’s the thing: If you take the tiles in your hand, organize them every possible way, and then press submit after each one, it’s possible to get lucky. More like you’re bound to get lucky. After receiving countless messages telling you that your word was not in the dictionary and to try again, one of those combinations will inevitably turn out to be a success.

It’s not hard to come across words that no one knew existed, but shouldn’t the game test your own knowledge, not your ability to try out every combination of letters available on some Internet site? Otherwise, why not just sit by your phone with a dictionary and look up words that match your letters?

With this kind of strategy, the game then becomes based on the mere luck of getting the right letters, and stops being the classic clashing of the minds that I have always enjoyed. It no longer takes skill to win, but instead is just a matter of having the tiles and the timing, something everyone seems to have at one time or another.

But perhaps more than that, it takes away from the game’s uniqueness. There are far too many games out there that need only perseverance and luck to win, but too few that require anything more.

To preserve the fun and fairness of the game itself, I think there should be a five-word maximum for sending words the computer won’t accept. In other words, you can only press the submit button on your phone, and have the message pop up saying your word in not in the dictionary, five times. Once this maximum is reached, then your turn should be forfeited.

There’s no reason to play a game that’s practically rigged— it only results in anger and
frustration for all those involved, an outcome I know firsthand. With this new rule, “Words with Friends” games could, for once, be won fair and square— and without any qi.